A Stripper, A Gangster, A Border Crisis (and no Trump!): What to See at Hot Docs 2019

It goes without saying that the upcoming 26th edition of Hot Docs (April 25th-May 5th) presents a wealth of topnotch nonfiction films to choose from. With over 200 pictures — not to mention numerous events, immersive media and the two-day industry Forum — North America’s largest documentary festival might even feel like too much of a good thing. Fortunately for me, between the miracle of Vimeo links and traveling on the doc fest circuit since IDFA, I’ve seen a good chunk of the feature-length selections, many of which I fear will be buried beneath the headline-grabbing buzz. (Much of it well-deserved. Not only are the majority of this year’s films female-helmed, but there’s even a “Persister” section dedicated to “Women Speaking Up and Being Heard.” And then there’s the honoring of the two Julias: “Focus on Julia Ivanova,” will showcase the near two-decade long career of the USSR-born director, while the US’s own Julia Reichert will receive both the Outstanding Achievement Award along with a retrospective.)

So rather than hail any audience pleasers (Ryan White’s Ask Dr. Ruth certainly doesn’t need my help packing the house) or the splashier guests (i.e., ”A Conversation with Ai Weiwei”) I’ll just offer a wide-ranging list of standout films both likely to be overlooked and not to be missed.

And to read that list visit Filmmaker magazine.

Full Frame’s 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy Closes with “Framing the Conversation: Stanley Nelson”

Taking place on a Saturday afternoon in the lobby of The Durham Hotel, “Framing the Conversation: Stanley Nelson” was the final panel discussion in a series of A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy chats at this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. (Though the festival itself is an arm of the Center for Documentary Studies at the prestigious Duke University, these always informative, free-to-the-public, laidback talks have been the 22-year-old Full Frame’s secret weapon for close to a decade.) In town to interview Nelson, the down-to-earth founder of Firelight Media, a recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and a National Humanities Medal from President Obama, and a filmmaker whose over three-decade career now includes his latest for PBS’s “American Masters” series Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, was Nancy Buirski, herself an award-winning filmmaker (The Loving Story, The Rape of Recy Taylor) and the founder of Full Frame.

Buirski began by noting that Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool seemed to mark a departure from the rest of Nelson’s oeuvre as it doesn’t deal explicitly with social justice and the African-American experience. Which also prompted her to wonder, “Are you an activist filmmaker?”

To learn the thoughtful answer to this and more visit Filmmaker magazine.

“DocsStillSoWhite: Moving From Ally to Accomplice” at Full Frame’s 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy

"DocsStillSoWhite: Moving From Ally to Accomplice” — the title inspired by a curriculum developed by the panel’s moderator Seena (“The Woke Coach”) Hodges — was the second of two diversity-centric A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy discussions presented at this year’s Full Frame. Speaking before an impressively packed house in The Durham Hotel lobby early on a Saturday morning, the upbeat Hodges began by reminding the four panel participants to be mindful of the allotted hour (while wryly apologizing for the “colonial construct of time”). She then asked the two teams of filmmakers — two black producers working alongside two white directors — to introduce themselves and to also discuss the genesis of their Full Frame-selected docs.

And to read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

"#DocsSoWhite: The Path Forward" at Full Frame's 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy

Moderated by “The Woke Coach,” Seena Hodges (who began by acknowledging the Catawba people, onetime inhabitants of the land on which the Durham Hotel was built), the fourth edition of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival’s #DocsSoWhite discussion focused squarely on concrete solutions to the film world’s stubborn resistance to true inclusion behind the lens. Hodges then laid out a few “rules” for her panelists, which included Gina Duncan, associate vice president of cinema at BAMcinematek; Maori Karmael Holmes, founder/artistic director of Blackstar Film Festival;  and filmmakers Edwin Martinez (Personal Statement) and Bernardo Ruiz (Harvest Season). Hodges spoke of being in a “brave” space, as opposed to a “safe” one, and urged everyone to “challenge yourself and your right to feel comfortable.” She also called attention to the fact that it’s “laborious” to be on a panel like this, recognizing that it shouldn’t be the “job” of people of color to enlighten.

To read the rest visit Documentary magazine.

'Southern Sustainability' at Full Frame's 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy

IDA’s own Dana Merwin, a native of south Georgia who, as Program Officer, administers the Enterprise Documentary Fund and the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, moderated the “Southern Sustainability” panel at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, which ran from April 4-7; the panel featured the diverse foursome of Eric Johnson of the Raleigh-based Trailblazer Studios, Rachel Raney of UNC-TV, Susan Ellis of Raleigh-based Footpath Pictures, and Naomi Walker of the Durham-based Southern Documentary Fund (SDF). Sitting that Friday morning in the laidback lobby area of The Durham Hotel, Merwin thanked the caffeinated audience for coming out for such an early conversation (at 9:15, the day after Full Frame’s opening-night festivities), and then urged all in attendance to acknowledge their role as “stakeholders” in the discussion that was to follow.

And to read all about it visit Documentary magazine.

How Do Producers Get Started? Full Frame’s 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy, “The Pathway to Producing”

Filing into the lobby of the comfortably chic Durham Hotel at noon on a Saturday for “The Pathway to Producing,” an A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy panel moderated by Ian Kibbe (Raising Bertie) of the Documentary Producers Association, it struck me that the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is one of those rare fests, nonfiction or not, with genuine audience diversity. While one would expect people of color to show up for the always packed #DocsSoWhite discussions (of which there were two this year), non-white folks also fill the house for the conversations that have nothing to do with race or gender or any identity at all — save for one. That of filmmaker. And that’s some form of progress (of which Full Frame should be proud).

As for “The Pathway to Producing” participants, the all-female — less surprising, since women tend to fill the role of producer more often than director — lineup included Jessica Hargrave (Ask Dr. Ruth), Carolyn Hepburn (One Child Nation), Jameka Autry (Ernie & Joe), and Esther Robinson (Memories of A Penitent Heart). (Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that One Child Nation, Ernie & Joe and Memories of A Penitent Heart all have women at the helm. And also that Dr. Ruth, feminist pop culture icon and titular star of the Ryan White doc, was somewhere out and about, making the rounds at the fest.)

And to read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Blowin’ Up chronicles harm reduction at the Queens Human Trafficking Intervention Court

“I hate court. I didn’t want to be at court. No one likes court. It’s boring. It’s terrible. It’s chaotic. And having to tell someone they have to do five sessions with me to get an adjournment and contemplation of dismissal, and then have to wait six months for that to happen – like, that’s crazy. But it’s the only possibility, so what are we supposed to do? Just not have the court and just let people get criminal records? And then what?”

Such was the frustrating bureaucracy that Eliza Hook, a former social worker at GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services), navigated on a daily basis for her sex worker clients at New York City’s Queens Human Intervention Trafficking Court. Headed by a female judge (the Honorable Toko Serita) and the first in the nation to emphasize harm reduction over punishment, it’s a reality Stephanie Wang-Breal captures both artistically and respectfully in Blowin’ Up, her fascinating, fly-on-the-wall portrait of this off-the-radar place where Hook served as a court advocate for close to a decade. So when I got the chance to chat via phone with the fierce film subject a few days before the doc’s theatrical premiere (April 5th in NYC, April 12th in LA), the first thing I wanted to know was whether there was a movement to reform the unjust system itself.

To find out, and read part two of my long and winding interview, visit Global Comment.

CPH:DOX 2019: VR and DOX:AWARD Standouts at the Sweet Sixteen Edition

Though I’m a nonfiction cinephile who’s been attending Copenhagen’s always invigorating CPH:DOX for nearly half a decade, this past 2019 edition (March 20-31) proved especially delightful when it came to the virtual realm. Conveniently located on the top floor of the fest’s Kunsthal Charlottenborg (contemporary art museum) headquarters, the VR:Cinema and its accompanying Inter:Active installations had me raving in a way I normally reserve for the moving image.

While Eliza McNitt’s three-part (seven-figure dealmaking) planetarium-in-a-headset Spheres was wowing the crowds as it did at last year’s Sundance, a trio of less buzzy gems had me most excited about the future of immersive media. Disparate in subject, they nonetheless shared what I’m hoping is a harbinger of a “slow VR movement” — a focus less on the bells and whistles (or rather, controllers and buttons) of the tech, and more on the creation of a contemplative experience for the user to digest. (Personally, I usually prefer to be a passive participant with the artistic vision firmly in control, rather than an active avatar in some complicated video game simulation.)

To that end, and as a longtime fan of industrial music godfather Blixa Bargeld, I was inclined to like Maya Puig’s Das Totale Tanz Theater 360, which turns Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Si Takka Lumi” into a mind-blowing, music-video-meets-VR experience.

To read all about the highlights visit Documentary magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Eliza Hook, 'Blowin' Up'

Stephanie Wang-Breal’s Blowin’ Up — the term that sex workers use for leaving one’s pimp — is a surprising slice of cinema vérité, an artistic and nonjudgmental, years-in-the-making look at New York City’s Queens Human Intervention Trafficking Court. Run by Judge Toko Serita and her all-female team, it’s the first of its kind to emphasize the welfare of sex workers over the criminalization of their trade, addressing the root causes of prostitution while providing alternative solutions (but only if that’s what the arrestee wants).

And one remarkable woman providing that respectful, pressure-free help is Eliza Hook, a social worker at GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services) and court advocate who fiercely puts her clients above all else — even a film shoot.

Documentary spoke with the tireless advocate a few days before the film’s April 5th premiere in New York (the film opens April 12 in Los Angeles).  This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“… When you’re a Niche Filmmaker in a World That’s Not Always as Openminded as You Might Like”: CineKink Artist Spotlight Award Recipient Jennifer Lyon Bell on Her Art Porn Career

This year CineKink NYC will be celebrating its upcoming sweet sixteen edition of the fest (April 3-7) by adding something new: the CineKink Artist Spotlight award. And in town to receive the honor — and premiere her latest Adorn, along with its making-of documentary, as well as host her “From Fantasy to Film: Design Your Own Porn Film” workshop — will be Amsterdam-based Jennifer Lyon Bell, no stranger to the kinky fest. Indeed, Bell has been screening her work at CineKink since 2006, racking up awards while making connections she cites as integral to her longevity in a notoriously difficult industry.

Filmmaker caught up with Bell to find out how exactly a feminist pornographer stays afloat in an age of social media platform crackdowns and trendy “intimacy coordinators.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Sex-Positive and Non-Exploitative, with a Big Piece of Questioning who is getting Representation”: Lisa Vandever on Celebrating CineKink NYC’s Sweet Sixteen

For the past 16 years CineKink NYC co-founder and director Lisa Vandever has been on a mission to not only showcase the best in sex-positive films — from narrative to nonfiction, features to shorts, high camp to deep drama — but also support their brave indie creators (who are very rarely straight white males). To that end, the upcoming edition (April 3-7) will see its first CineKink Artist Spotlight award bestowed on feminist pornographer Jennifer Lyon Bell, whose erotic work Vandever has been continuously championing since 2006.

Filmmaker was fortunate that Vandever found time for a brief chat in the midst of frenzied last-minute preparations a few days prior to opening night.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.